“Racism:” America’s “Toxic Tort”

“Racism:” America’s “Toxic Tort”

Racism is the systemic deprivation of all variants of human dignity based upon one’s perceived ancestry, by "white people", its inventors.

Systemic deprivation means “ubiquitous,” i.e., universal injury against certain “persons,” especially African descendents, who are impaired, divested, disabled, or disallowed from or in every day pursuits.

“Variants of human dignity” means that whole panoply of human endeavors, from earning income, to being educated, to living in a house, to religious and musical expression, to sports and the arts, to marrying and raising a family—in short, just plain living, including, liberty, property and the pursuit of happiness, itself.

“White people,” are people of Western European descent who are or who become inexorable beneficiaries of assorted rights, privileges and opportunities, without more, so long as they adhered to the predominant mores of North American (and formerly Southern African) “white people": being racist against blacks, ipse dixit.

Early English settlers in Virginia invented racism at Jamestown in North America, after 1619, when a Dutch man of war brought 20 captured Africans there, who were traded for tobacco. These early blacks became indentured servants, among the settlers, just like the white indentured servants with whom they co-existed and cohabited, under the sovereignty of the colonial master caste.

This colonial master caste invented racism to divide the black indentured servants from the white indentured servants, especially after Nathaniel Bacon’s Rebellion in 1676, wherein the indentured servants, black and white, rose up against the colonial caste under the leadership of a scion of the landed gentry and a member of the Virginia House of Burgesses, Nathaniel Bacon. Bacon died before the rebellion concluded, which at any event failed. But, it succeeded in causing the master caste to construct, encode and enforce ever deepening distinctions, between whites and blacks, eventually codified in law and custom and calcified in economics and culture. See Cooper, William J, Liberty and Slavery: Southern Politics to 1860, Univ of South Carolina Press, 2001, p. 9-10. http://www.amazon.com/Liberty-Slavery-Southern-Politics-1860/dp/1570033870#reader_1570033870.

Because white people invented “racism” which furnished them an economic boon, and was a white unifying force, racism not only has subsisted, and persisted; it has flourished, it has exponentially multiplied, as a staple of American democracy, as originally reflected in the U.S. Constitution and as formally declared in many United States Supreme Court decisions.

Under these decisions, Blacks were not “outlaws.” They were outside the law: Other. They were non-persons, “invisible men” to quote Ralph Ellison, author of the eponymously named classic, Invisible Man. http://www.amazon.com/Invisible-Man-Ralph-Ellison/dp/0679732764

Like the oil now gushing forth into the Gulf of Mexico, racism also gushed forth, like a plague, across the United States of America, and into every fiber, sanctuary, and estuary of American life. We are still endeavoring to mop up its lethal and lubricious legacy. It spread all over America, because its benefits covered all of white America, whether they wanted it to or not.

Moreover, as oil is toxic, so is racism. As oil has many byproducts, so does racism. As oil is ugly, so is racism. Racism is toxic. As practiced, racism is also a “tort,” a civil wrong. Even so, lawyers typically classify racism under “civil rights.” There’s nothing right about racism. It is America’s toxic tort: crying out for remediation.

If we would contribute the soon—to—be billions of dollars used to attempt to staunch the oil gusher to also attempt to staunch the racism gusher, America and the world would be a better place. The oil is a mere metaphor. May neither oil, nor racism, presage an All--American Apocalypse. And, may both be overcome in the near term!